Petal - A Thousand Ages

A couple years ago there was a podcast episode names A Thousand Ages. I like the name and have recycled it as the title of my latest Petal release - while the phrase is from an old hymn, my use is inspired by Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, a sci-fi classic which begins with a quote from the hymn.

For several years I've been working on tunes which capture my impressions of the book, and have finally got them into some sort of shape and order which feels release-worthy. Featuring some beautiful cover art courtesy of Richard PJ Lambert, the whole thing is freely available from the Rusted Sun Collective at Bandcamp:



The original Double Pinhole Solargraph image used for the artwork is available from Mr. Lambert's flikr stream at https://flic.kr/p/s817GW. Additional information about the artists is also available at http://www.richardpjlambert.com/ and https://www.flickr.com/photos/auspices/.

Enjoy!

For the Fathers We Never Found

The final episode is here.

I thank everyone who has followed this podcast for so long - seven years now, I think - and hope you've enjoyed listening to the music as much as I've enjoyed making it. Obviously, things have slowed down a lot over the past year or so, but as I've said at some points I've been making a lot of music. For the most part it's freely available Creative Commons stuff, very similar in vibe and style to the Binaural Banjo, but for various reasons the material just isn't finding its way here.

So I'm taking the hint from myself and closing down.

The blog/podcast will stay online indefinitely, and the tunes will likewise be hosted over at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/podcast_dronelab. Please do continue to download and enjoy, and I would be grateful for anyone to spread the word about my doings as Petal or my other projects. All of these will be posted to http://petalmusic.blogspot.com/.

As for this last episode, as far as binaural beats go the previous episode was really the last. There is no binaural beat in this one, which is here because it started out as a Binaural Banjo tune and like so many others evolved into something else. I'm also happy to say it is the result of a collaboration between myself and Thomas Lindsey, aka TonePoet, who is an amazing musician in his own right and who releases lots of great stuff over at Bandcamp under the Rusted Sun netlabel: https://rustedsun.bandcamp.com/. If you like this tune, please be sure to head over and download - for free or "name your price" - the complete EP, Communicate, by the Rusted Sun Collective.

Thank you all again.

For the Fathers We Never Found

Bandcamp EP Released

Too much time has passed since the last Binaural Banjo episode, and I confess that many things have me contemplating the future of this podcast. I've been making lots of music lately, but my ideas and the way the tunes come together don't generally fit the vibe of the podcast.

That said, I do have a tune in the works that will make a good episode and hope to have it online within a week or two. Plus I've been working with some great musicians on collaborations that hopefully will come out on Creative Commons netlabels by late spring or summer.

In the meantime, I decided to take the Bandcamp plunge and release an EP that I've been working on for a while.The tunes were recorded so that bits and pieces could be extracted and used as loops and samples for some other projects. It was supposed to be disposable but I ended up growing attached to the tunes, so I pulled them together into a release:


I debated with myself about charging anything, but $3 for 20 minutes or so of music seems reasonable. I kept the CC licensing, so the music can be sampled and used in other stuff same as Binaural Banjo tunes. If you download a copy and like it, please feel free to recommend to friends and family!

A Thousand Ages

Breaking with the usual guitar and banjo duet approach, this tune includes a couple low synth parts. I've also been experimenting a lot lately with poly-rhythms and overlapping time signatures, looking for surprises and interesting intersections of beats and phrases, and although some of that stuff has come out too abstract for what I like to do with this podcast there is a touch of that here towards the end.

The binaural beat is 18Hz, so once again good for some active listening and this tune can also stand a little higher volume than I recommend for the more mellow, sleepy tunes.

I see the last episode, Boatman, was something like four plus months ago. Sorry about that - I've had a bunch of tunes that I started writing for the podcast but which evolved into other projects, so the delay was not from a lack of activity but from too much activity going off in other directions. But it has all gone towards a full length acoustic-ambient release I hope to have out soon, and I think everyone who likes the Binaural Banjo will like that, too.

Thanks as always for your patience and for listening!

As usual, with embedded artwork:

A Thousand Ages

The Boatman

First off, I should say that this tune is pretty dark and noisy. On the one hand, I think it makes some interesting changes from the kind of music I generally post. On the other, I tend to think of the Binaural Banjo as an outlet for my more melodic and light offerings and this tune just doesn't go there. Not for lack of trying - part of the delay in getting a tune up here is the fact that everything I produce lately turns out dark, regardless of how it starts out.

But for all that I like the tune, and it may be relaxing enough in its own way. It comes with a 2Hz binaural beat, which is way down in the mix (the droning you hear is ebowed banjo, not the binaural beat track). At low volume and with headphones it makes an interesting trip.

Next time will be something lighter, I promise.

The Boatman (with embedded artwork!)

Sunstroke

I mentioned in my last post about the end of the lossless site that I was working on a lot of new ideas, and of course true to form here I am posting an episode that doesn't really incorporate any of them. But I got stuck on this new wave psychedelic guitar riff a couple weeks ago and decided to see how well I could mix it into a Binaural Banjo tune.

There are some new things in here, actually. I've been wanting to work a rhythm section into more of what I do, which may not be the best choice for this podcast overall but for this tune I think it sounds okay. Because it's a bit more of a pop song and could stand to be listened to at regular volume I included a 30Hz binaural beat that should work with more active listening.

The only thing to watch out for is the high droney parts, which have a kind of delay that I couldn't get rid of. It doesn't take away too much, but maybe should have reduced the gain a bit. Of course you're all welcome to comment.

Includes artwork!

Sunstroke

Lossless Site Offline

For multiple reasons I have decided to no longer maintain my own domain, so the lossless site is no longer available as of today.

I do have every intention of maintaining this podcast indefinitely. From what I read online there does seem to be some doubt about the future of Feedburner and possibly podcasting in general, but we'll have to work through those issues as they arise. At the very least this blog will remain as the front page, regardless of how the music content gets syndicated.

And since I'm posting general info and updates, I know it's been pretty quiet here lately but I had some other musical commitments that I had to fulfill. All good fun but time consuming. That's done with now, and I'm in the studio working hard on a bunch of new tunes and new ideas. So stay tuned and thanks as always for hanging in there!